Experimental Investigation for Damage Evaluation of Bridges Using Piezo-Transducers

In recent years, there is a continuous rise in construction activities in the field of civil engineering. The life of a structure depends on the initial strength and the maintenance of construction. The effects on infrastructure due to aging, deterioration, and extreme events are associated with the realization of the need for advanced structural health monitoring (SHM) and damage detection tools. Civil engineering structures such as bridges have a long design life and, therefore, unavoidably come across physical aging and deterioration. Through this SHM technology, early detection of structural damage and examination of the structural integrity is possible with a resultant optimization of maintenance of bridges. The electro-mechanical impedance (EMI) technique is a recent method that is comfortable to implement complex structures with simple instrumentation and direct results. In this research work, a case study of bridge model is considered for SHM in determining damage severity and its location for moderate to severe damage. Also, the same technique applied to the existing bridge for structural health monitoring. From results, it was concluded that the presented methodology was capable of monitoring the existing bridges and also shows good efficiency in determining damage severity and its location. There are noticeable changes in frequencies for moderate to severe damage. Hence, this technique is suitable for the prediction of the presence of damage and its location.